Ashley Greene Takes Olivia Twisted

Ashley Greene, best known for her role as Alice Cullen in The Twilight Saga, is set to star in a modern-day retelling of Charles Dickens’ “Oliver Twist” entitled Olivia Twisted. Variety has the news, saying that Michael De Luca will produce.

Described as “ultra-modern,” Twisted arrives from screenwriter Michael Roberts and, in addition to gender-swapping and doubling the age of the lead, places Olivia in control of a band of criminal street urchins who find themselves in the middle of a gang war after a kidnapping job goes bad.

Dickens’ text has been adapted for the screen many times over, including a recent Roman Polanski version. It was also famously adapted by David Lean in 1948, as a musical, Oliver! in 1968. Non-traditional tellings of the tale are also not uncommon; in 1988 Walt Disney Pictures released an animated version, Oliver and Company that featured an orange cat in the lead.